


Javelin Through The Shirt

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Burns, Fire, Fort Merceus, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, verdant wind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Linhardt knows only too well what can happen to a knight who wears heavy armor
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez & Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Javelin Through The Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a happy fic, if that wasn't clear from the tags. If you want to read about these two being happy together, this isn't the place to read that.

_1180_

“It must be scary for you, going out onto the battlefield wearing nothing but your uniform,” Caspar said, his words distorted through the mouthful of meat pie.

“Scary? No, what’s scary is all the armor you wear,” replied Linhardt.

“What?! Armor means I can get real close, up in the thick of the fighting, and nobody can touch me!” said Caspar.

Linhardt fixed his gaze on Caspar. “You know, I am a mage. You must have some idea how magic works, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, magic can go through armor, but it’s not any worse than taking a javelin through the shirt like you could. Not like that doesn’t hurt,” he said, remembering the times Linhardt had healed him after a blade found its way through cracks in his armor.

“You really don’t know a thing about magic,” said Linhardt.

“I don’t?” Caspar said, eyes widening. “Tell me.”

“Have you helped out in Manuela’s infirmary at all?”

“A little.”

“Have you seen what happens when an armored knight is struck with fire?”

“No?”

Linhardt looked directly at Caspar, and put down his fork. He had only seen it once, there in the infirmary, but his appetite had disappeared remembering. “It’s far worse than a javelin through the shirt. The heat, depending on the strength of the mage, could melt the inside of the armor. Blood that seems to pour from everywhere at once, no skin to hold it in, the coating of stinking pus, all of that. And it lasts for days, sometimes. The scars last forever. I’d hate to be a knight.”

“Huh. I can’t really imagine.”

“If you could, would you still be ok being a knight?”

“Probably,” Caspar took another bite. “I mean, fighting’s all I’ve got, right?”

* * *

_1185_

Later, after Linhardt had left the Empire, he would think back to this conversation in the dining hall.

Even after joining the Golden Deer class, he and Caspar had kept up correspondence, and he knew from his old friend’s letters that he had been stationed in Fort Merceus. His hope of a joyful reunion, of winning back Caspar’s heart, hadn’t been dashed, in fact, until after the battle. Even as he fled the fort along with the rest of Byleth’s army, Linhardt imagined that whatever was coming, Caspar’s armor and fighting spirit would protect him, at least until they could see each other again.

What changed that was the heat. It rolled off the fort, singeing the ends of Linhardt’s hair as he fled. It was nothing like the warm afternoons of late summer, when the heat made him incapable of anything but rest; nothing like the roaring hearth at his father’s estate, where the radiating heat only compounded the oppressive atmosphere; nothing like the fire he had conjured so many times at the academy and on the battlefield, that had melded together flesh and armor. No, this was far worse. Purer.

“A javelin of light” Claude and Byleth later called it, but to Linhardt, it felt as if it was a javelin of heat. Quite different from the javelins he and Caspar had once felt during training. Quite different from the kinds of javelins that could be stopped by armor. The letters had stopped long ago, but Linhardt knew now that there was no way that Caspar had survived.

He couldn’t grieve. Not without thinking about flesh and metal, about blood that seemed to pour from everywhere without skin to contain it, about thick greenish liquid, and the smell that defied comparison. Not without imagining the pain and horror of Caspar’s final moments in the chaos of the destroyed fort, melting, cooking, burning to death inside a metal suit.

Eventually, Linhardt destroyed their letters. He didn’t want the rest of Claude’s and Byleth’s army to know he had remained close to someone within the Empire until so recently, or so he told himself. Besides, there was nothing that could be done about Caspar. He was dead, and Linhardt had to move on. He had to or else he would be consumed completely.

Still there was nothing he could to erase from his memory the conversation they had once had over dining hall fare during their days as students. Nor could he erase the wish that Caspar had simply died from a plain metal javelin through a shirt.


End file.
